There are many applications in academic, industrial, and medical fields that benefit from devices and methods that are capable of accurately and controllably delivering fluids, such as liquids and gases, that have a beneficial effect when administered in known and controlled quantities. Such devices and methods can be particularly useful in the medical field where treatments for many patients include the administration of a known amount of a substance at predetermined intervals.
One category of devices for delivering such fluids is that of infusion pumps that have been developed for the administration of insulin and/or other medicaments for those suffering from both type I and type II diabetes. Some pumps configured as portable infusion devices can provide continuous subcutaneous insulin injection and/or infusion therapy for the treatment of diabetes. Such therapy may include the regular and/or continuous injection or infusion of insulin into the skin of a person suffering from diabetes and offer an alternative to multiple daily injections of insulin by an insulin syringe or an insulin pen. Such pumps can be ambulatory/portable infusion pumps that are worn by the user and may use replaceable cartridges. Examples of such pumps and various features that can be associated with such pumps include those disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 13/557,163, 12/714,299, 12/538,018, 13/838,617, 13/827,707 and U.S. Pat. No. 8,287,495, each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Such infusion pumps are often discretely located on or around a patient, such as beneath clothing or in a carrying pouch. Some infusion pumps are therefore adapted to be programmed with remote control devices that enable programming without directly interacting with a user interface of the pump. These remote controllers therefore enable a pump to be programmed more privately and comfortably. With the proliferation of handheld consumer electronic devices, such as smartphones, there is a desire to be able to utilize such devices as the remote controller for remotely programming an infusion pump device. However, medical devices and consumer electronics have vastly different safety and reliability profiles, such that use of such consumer electronic devices to program medical devices such as infusion pumps could present safety issues for the patient.